Rilke's wisdom for today

"we must hold to what is difficult"

and 

"try to love the questions themselves"

here's a question:

Where is the line between witness and participant? Is there a line? Boundaries, for me right now, are so blurred. I'm feeling either crazy or enlightened, and I don't know if I believe in enlightenment in the "ascension to a higher plane" sense. 

Well, I wanted cathartic and here I am. 

the whole wave of the world is crashing into me and I am saturated in unfallen tears for bearing witness to the immensity of beauty and pain, and beauty in pain, and pain in beauty of life. Of living. Of hardship in its reality. 

phew.

And then all I can think is

"damnit Alex, you are just way too serious all the time."

can I change?

can I hold a bridge with my life between levity and weighted reality?

can I walk between them freely, and without guilt?

can I do so in an age with so much chaos and suffering and pain?

is that my duty?

or shall I think of it as something less grave than a duty?

an honor? a joy?

 a joy to know the extremes of life and look across the chasm between with reverence? 

even that seems serious... 

phew...

to bear witness

"In so many ways, I wish I had not seen what I saw. Oil out to sea from horizon to horizon; people sick; marshes burned; hope collapsing. It will be years before we know the truth of this BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. I am now accountable. How to change my life and become more deliberate in all my actions, large and small? May my eyes stay open to the beauty of this world and act. This is my daily mantra."

"A friend said to me the other day, 'You are married to sorrow.' And I said, 'No, I just choose not to look away.' There is joy in facing the truth of our lives whether it is through beauty or terror. Perhaps it is about presence, choosing to be present with where we find ourselves at any given moment. I simply try to bear witness to what I see through the language of story."

"To bear witness is not a passive act. It can lead us to acts of consciousness and consequence."


--all from Terry Tempest Williams, in and around The Gulf Between Us